Chapter 10

Dave Rossi's house
Potomac, MD

Emily

"It's a what?" Emily could not have heard that right. Could. Not.

"An organization for the training, sale and support of those who want a lifestyle of consensual slavery," Rossi repeated patiently.

She had heard him right. She took another long sip of the rich, red wine he was serving, this being off hours. Well, okay. "And you're involved with this? Hiding someone in the basement we don't know about?"

"No, for one thing I prefer the chase; those people make it too easy. For another I refuse to pay those prices."

"How much do slaves cost?"

"I have yet to see one go for less than a hundred thousand." He told her. "And that was a one-year, first time contract with no specialization and minimal training. A specialist, an expert in their field, on a multi-year contract with some experience under their belts, we're talking millions. And you have to be able to provide room, board and medical."

Morgan whistled. "What about Cali?'

"Slaves are never allowed to know what they're worth while they're in, but privately Anderson told me that she expects 1.5 million for her first ten year contract." Rossi nodded at the shocked look in both their eyes. "She's trained in what they call the British Imperial system, and people who do are rarely sold outside of that system, and then she's both cross-trained with Parker and done finish training under Anderson, and she has a top-notch University degree. And she is very, very good at her role. That makes her both rare and valuable. Granted she'll have to remit the cost of all that training as well as her tuition, but even after that she'll clear a million for the first contract, easy. And if she keeps going for another thirty years after that, which is not unknown for her role, and with the added experience…"

"…she could retire with five million in the bank, easy." Emily laughed. "I wouldn't mind an IRA like that."

"You and me both," Morgan agreed. "Granted, I wouldn't be willing to give up my autonomy for it. It's not like she can quit if the boss turns out to be an ass."

"There is that." Emily agreed. She turned back to Rossi. "Okay, start from the top. How did you get involved?"

"A friend of mine, Peter Delaney, is an owner. He always has a couple of people working at his place; he always called them the Cook and the Houseboy. I figured they were hired staff; he has the money for it and he's not the only friend I have with staff. But his were always different, somehow they were better. Everything was spot on perfect, everything has this flow. I'd go to someone else's house and the maid would ask if I wanted coffee. I go to his house and coffee appears just as I'm starting to think about it, already fixed just the way I like it, that sort of thing. I admit, I admired it and I said so. Then a few years ago, before I came back to the BAU I went out on a book tour in Europe. He got a hold of me and asked me if I would be willing to give a talk at this week-end get together he was attending, at a place called Kaleigh Castle."

"I've heard of that place." Emily said. "It's a hotel outside London. They do corporate retreats, high-end conventions, that kind of thing. But there was a rumor that they hosted some pretty kinky week-ends. Did you friend invite you to one?"

"Yes, he did." Rossi replied. "But I didn't know it at the time. For starters I had to wear a tux. "

"And what were the slaves wearing?" Morgan asked.

"Livery. Literal servants livery, not the cutesy kinky versions either. We made polite chit-chat over drinks at first. It seemed like everyone there wanted to get to know me but they were all good at deflecting questions about themselves. It was an international crowd, I got that much."

"After that what happened?" Emily asked.

"An eight-course meal right out of a period movie, formal, elegant and flawless; I have to admit I enjoyed the entire experience. After dinner we retired to the library for drinks…"

"…when the show started," Morgan interrupted.

Rossi glared at him. "…where I gave a talk on profiling techniques and their use with psychopathic personalities."

"Profiling?" Emily was skeptical. She thought this group had to do with sex.

"Profiling, and let me tell you, the Q and A session after was more interesting than the one I gave at Scotland Yard the following week. Those people were seriously up to date on the subject."

"Profiling?" Now Morgan sounded skeptical.

"Mmm-hmmm, two weeks later I was in France and Peter showed up. He took me out to dinner, told me all about it, and offered me an invitation to join it."

'And you joined up?" Emily said.

"Not yet. When I finished the tour I went back to Kaleigh Castle. This time I stayed a few days, that's what sold me."

"I would assume you finally got someone in your bed but I've been wrong so far." Morgan shook his head. "What sold you?"

"This." Rossi got up and stepped around the corner, coming back with a large basket full of reports. "What they call interviewing clients and studying human behavior. What we call profiling."

Emily couldn't help it. She picked up one of the reports and started paging through it. "They profile people?"

"They profile each other, the slaves or clients if you will, the Owners, the trainers as they work their way up into the system. Granted they focus more on sexuality, not psychopathology, but…"

"But there is a hell of a lot of overlap. There's a lot here." Morgan said, looking at the box.

Rossi started laughing. "This is just for this month. Think hundreds of years, thousands of profiles, reams of reports from people studying human behavior. The library at Kaleigh Castle is bigger than our office and they have at least a dozen more libraries just like it around the world, as well as their own intranet." For the first time in all this they heard actual desire coming out of Rossi. "It's more data than you could absorb in a lifetime."

Morgan and Emily looked at each other and then corrected him in unison. "Reid."

"Good point." Rossi chuckled. "Now that he knows about it I may see if he can find a way to incorporate all that data into the BAU library. I have yet to figure out how without letting the FBI in on that organization. That's the one thing they insisted on, discretion."

"I'm surprised you even left the library." She put the report back in the box lest she become too distracted.

"I didn't have to stay, it's a lending system." Rossi was, yes, almost grinning. "They're working on digitizing it. You can get copies of any report up to a certain point, after that they lend them out, mail them to you, and translate for you if needed. About every month or two I go pick up a stack of reading material at their office in DC."

"So you've been holding out on us." Morgan teased lightly. He flashed a quick grin at Emily, she knew he was as geeky as she was, not as bad as Reid, but enough to find the thought of all that data temptingly sweet.

"Like I said, discretion."

"So sex never came up in any of this? I mean, other than outside the reports?" Morgan asked.

"My first night at Kaleigh Castle the valet quietly informed me that if I desired companionship at any time I should inform him and he would see that someone was sent to my room. I told him I did not desire companionship on that trip, but thank you very much, and it wasn't brought up again. I was curious however, and asked about it the next day. I ended up in a meeting with a Mr. Dalton. Dalton was the head Trainer at Rothmere, their big training house in England. Turned out Kaleigh Castle is one of a number of hotels operated by that organization, and one of their training resources. He explained that there are different training systems, different priorities and focus of interest for nearly every major house, as well as regional or national differences. The Asians, for example, are known for their brutality, the Southern Europeans for their sensuality, and so on. At Rothmere they worked with what was known as the British Imperial system, which was unique in that there was no sex involved and a relative low emphasis on psychology. Instead they focused on traditional service roles, butlers, maids, nannies, that sort of thing."

"I guess you don't really need to dig too far into someone's lovemap if all they're going to do is polish your floor." Morgan said.

"And historically it would be considered beneath someone to sleep with the staff." Emily added.

Rossi nodded in agreement. "He explained that the Eastern US system there was more interest paid to people's sexuality and to their psychological state as well. In the US most people are recruited from what we would consider the leather or fetish community whereas in the British Imperial system far more are actually from families who have served for generations, hence the difference. So rather than have everyone try to cover everything they cross-trained, American clients travel to Britain to learn the specifics of certain service roles, British clients travel to America to dive into the psychological and or sexual side. He had two American clients in house; both rated for sexual service, which he would have sent along if I had requested it."

Emily nodded. She was following so far. "So how does all this relate back to the case?"

Rossi refilled everyone's wine. "Remember when I said there were different systems that specialize in different aspects? The British focus on service, loyalty and precision, not sex or meaning. The East Coast system includes sex, but with a focus on long-term relationships, looking for people with the desire to serve above everything else, regardless of orientation of preferred paraphilia. That's why the emphasis on psychology. But they've been having a problem with the West Coast houses. They tend to focus purely on the sex, on the kink, putting out pretty little blond toys for new money types who want something different to play with every time they turn around."

"Mmm," Emily nodded in understanding. "High turnover then, not enough time to develop a good profile; that sounds like a good way to let something dangerous into your tidy system."

"And they did. Michael Howard, our Unsub. He came out of one of the West Coast houses. The way it was explained to us it's the exact opposite of the British system, everyone is expected to be willing and able to perform sexually at all times. There is no such thing as limits. And if you get upset with that it's a chance for 'discussion', not censure of the person who pushed."

"Sounds like a great environment for an Unsub. He can act out any fantasy he wants, get as brutal as he'd like, and no one would complain."

"Right, but then he came out here for more training. Imala Anderson is what's known as a Trainer of Trainers, an expert in the field, one who can add certain ratings to someone's personnel file, something like that. Trainers send their student trainers from around the world to work with her." He chuckled. "Turned out I knew her. Back when we were setting up the BAU we crossed paths at a number of seminars. She specializes in what's known as anticipatory service, being able to read behavior so well you know what someone wants or needs almost before they think about it." He picked up his wine again. "In other words, profiling."

Morgan and Emily both sat back, "Being able to read someone so well you can get out ahead of them. That's hard enough to do, let alone teach." Emily said.

Rossi nodded. "Her second, Chris Parker, started in the US Eastern system but then cross trained with both the British Imperial and Japanese systems. He's been starting his own program to bring a slightly modified version of the British system to the US, keep the focus on service and hierarchy and off the sexuality but encourage people to be more generalized, with a thorough grounding in technology. He's focusing on Owners who might just want one person to manage the house, do some light cooking, a little secretarial work, that sort of thing, for a longer term contract and then someone else to handle the sexual side. To that end he's been cross-training people with Dalton."

Emily sighed as the problem came into sight. "Oh, I can see where this is going. Parker had some of Dalton's people in house when Howard got there, people who weren't anticipating any sort of sexual involvement. And then Howard forced them to perform…"

"…and Parker cried rape on their behalf. The system would have censured Howard, busted him down the ladder for more training, but when Anderson sat him down and started interviewing him she realized they were dealing with a psychopath. She couldn't go to law enforcement, she tried to reach me but I was out of the country at the time and no cop was going to listen to her, they wouldn't understand her experience. And the victims were in a BDSM situation, that's almost impossible to prosecute. But she did have enough influence to get him expelled from the system."

"Not only cutting him off from his victim pool but also from his social networks and his source of income." Emily shook her head. "That is one hell of a trigger. And her profile didn't catch that?"

"They profile for paraphilia, not pathology. That's our job. He tried recruiting from the local BDSM community but they weren't willing to play along with the total control aspects of his fantasies the way people in the system did. He tried prostitutes, but even they refused to go along. Finally he started abducting people who fit his fantasy and forcing them to perform."

"And would probably threaten to kill them if they didn't, which eventually they wouldn't, he would push too far." Emily nodded, it all fit. "So, did he target Cali directly? Did he know she came out of their system?"

"From what we could tell, no; she crossed paths with the ones who he had attacked in transit, and it's not something they would have explained to her when she arrived here. Everything was on a need to know basis and she didn't need to know. But she was working on her Masters; they allowed her to continue that, she was taking a class at Georgetown."

"And Reid was leaving a lecture. Howard was targeting college students. So it was just wrong place, wrong time." Damn it. "But why did he keep them so long?"

"Endorphins," Rossi settle back. "Behold the elephant that always lives in the corner of the room."

"I don't understand."

"Another problem they've been having with the West Coast houses is Owners or their guests slipping slaves illegal substances to help everyone loosen up and have a good time. One of the ways they've been combating this is by carefully observing their clients to see how they react to narcotics and other drugs when administered in a medical situation. In her second year at Cambridge Cali's appendix ruptured. She spent a couple of days on morphine. After that they put a strict no-narcotics note in her file, too high an addiction risk."

All of a sudden it started patting in to shape. "Oh my God..." Emily breathed.

Rossi sipped his wine and nodded. "Take two people who perfectly fit each other's lovemaps, so they're likely to fall in love. Make them both virgins, yes…." He nodded "…so they're matched sexually. Give them complimentary levels of background information, Reid on how to handle an Unsub, Cali Nash on how to act out a BDSM scenario, so they have to work together to survive."

"Give them every reason to work together to pacify the Unsub, which is SOP in these cases." Morgan added. "They weren't going to have any problem acting out whatever he wanted, no matter how kinky. They weren't going to have any problem doing whatever he wanted."

Rossi nodded again. "And then give them both a high addiction potential."

"They started getting high off it." Emily groaned, of course.

"Mmm-hmm. Endorphin. Endogenous morphine, the body's natural opiates."

"That's why he kept them so long. He killed the other victims when they said no, they refused. But Reid and Cali Nash never did, just like the slaves he was used to from California. I mean at first it probably would have been Reid following SOP to give us time to find him, but eventually they would have been doing it for the buzz." Well crap little brother, Emily thought, this sucks for you.

Rossi sipped his wine again. "Mmm-hmm, which led to the next problem."